Comment 26 for bug 26452

Hi,

thanks for the reply. I spent some time scratching my head over this
and delving into the weird world of incompatible free software
licenses. It seems strange that we have here a piece of free
software, which relies on another piece of free software; we can
distribute both of them, but we can't distribute them connected, so we
can only distribute something that is effectively crippled. From the
end-user perspective it seems like this should be solvable - we can
find a way to distribute many other things which are much more
incompatible with free software as a whole :) I also thought that
multiverse was where things go which have license incompatibilities
anyway.

But, from a strict standpoint, it does make sense. If I understand it
correctly, the apache license has stricter requirements regarding
patents than GPL v2, but is more compatible with GPL V3 ... or
something?

Out of curiousity I started reading all the licenses for all the other
packages I have installed. Is the exception you mention just as
simple as what's in the license for CUPS, for example? Such as

" xxx. OpenSSL Toolkit License Exception;

 a. Research Systems Unix Group at the University of Michigan
explicitly allows the
    compilation and distribution of the CUPS software
    with Netatalk"

Is there a petition we can sign, or can I just call them up and ask, maybe?

Here's my argument for why this is important: It's important that
linux (in our case, ubuntu) be able to interoperate on a network with
other OS's. If you use a Mac, AFP is the sanest option. Apple
doesn't have all that much market share, but it does have a lot at
least in schools and universities in the US and in creative and design
businesses. These are places where Ubuntu could be a great addition,
and being able to share files between osx and linux is a critical part
of making that work.

I say that from spending the last 7 years running a linux lab in a
100% Mac art school. Having netatalk and avahi working well is
really, really, important. :)

Quoting Michael Bienia <email address hidden>:

> No, as netatalk linked with openssl wouldn't be redistributable, which
> is a main requirement for inclusion in multiverse.
>
> One option is to convince netatalk upstream to add a openssl
> exception to the license.
> An other option is to try if netatalk builds and works with gnutls.
>
> --
> netatalk not built with encrypted auth support
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/26452
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